Latest Tutorial posts from Steve Polito

Process slow network requests with Turbo and Active Model

Learn how to build a dynamic loading screen without writing a line of JavaScript.

Build a (better) search form in Rails with Active Model

Harness the power of Active Model to supercharge your search forms.

Speed up your Rack application with HTTP

You don't need a sophisticated caching mechanism to improve your application's performance. All you need is a basic understanding of the HTTP specification.

A pragmatic guide to building a Rack application from scratch

Learn how to build a production ready Rack application without a framework like Rails or Sinatra.

Customize a Video Thumbnail in Drupal

When you upload a video to Drupal from YouTube or Vimeo, an automatically generated thumbnail will be created. This is normally not a big deal, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could have complete control over the thumbnail that is associated with the video? Thankfully, with Drupal’s File Entity module, you can. In this tutorial, we will add the ability to add a custom video thumbnail to a video in Drupal. As an added bonus, we will use the ImageCache Actions module to automatically add a play button to each video thumbnail.

Dynamically Link to Each Month In Drupal's Calendar

Drupal’s Calendar module allows you to page between months. However, it can be frustrating for a user to have to page several months in either direction if they know what month they want to view. For example, if the current month is June but a user wants to see upcoming events in December, they would need to click through 5 times. In this tutorial, we are going to solve this problem by creating a menu where each menu item will link to each month. As an added bonus, we will make sure that the menu updates annually by using Menu Tokens.

Batch Upload Field Collection Items to Create an Image Gallery

Let’s say you want to create an image gallery on your site. Let’s say that each image also needs a caption and a photo credit field. One solution would be to create a field collection of and image, text and long text field. However, the most image galleries contain many images. It would be very time consuming to have to upload each image individually. Enter Field Collection Bulkupload. With Field Collection Bulkupload you can drag and drop multiple images onto the page and have them automatically uploaded.

Dynamically Control FlexSlider Caption Position and Color in Drupal

Drupal’s Flex Slider module allows site builders to add rotating slides with captions. Using custom CSS, site themers can adjust the caption’s position and color. This is useful when the caption color might be hard to read against the slide, or is positioned awkwardly. However, wouldn’t it be nice to have complete control over the caption’s color, position and background color right within the CMS?

Create a List Tab For Drupal Calendar

Drupal’s Calendar module allows an easy way for site builders to display events in a month, week day and year format right out of the box. However, I recently needed to add an additional tab to the view display to list all upcoming events.

Configure Drupal's Search API to Search Field Collections and Paragraphs

This tutorial will assume that you are somewhat familiar with the Search API module. It also assumes you are using the Search API with the Search API Database Search and Search API Pages modules. The goal here is to ensure paragraph and field collection fields are being indexed by Search API and associated with their host node.

Drupal Configure SMTP Module to Work with Gmail [Updated]

At this point, there have been many great tutorials written about configuring Drupal’s SMTP Authentication Support with Gmail. However, these tutorials are out dated, and do not take into account Google’s added security settings. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to configure Drupal’s SMTP Authentication Support module and update Gmail’s security setting.

Correctly Display Repeating Dates In Drupal

Learn how to correctly display repeating dates in Drupal using the Date Repeat API

Update Drupal Field Settings For Fields With Data In Database

Sometimes you need to edit a field’s configuration once there is already data store in the database for this field. If you try to do this, you’ll get the following message.

Install Drupal Memcached on a Media Temple DV Server

Site performance is crucial to a good user experience, and also is a factor in SEO. Because Drupal sites can be very query heavy at times, their performance can suffer. Luckily, there are a few caching libraries than can solve this problem and help increase performance. In this tutorial we’re going to install the Memcached library on a Media Temple DV Server, as well as configure the Memcache API and Integration module.

Drupal Salesforce Not Updating Records [Solved]

OK, so you’ve integrated your Drupal install with Salesforce and are able to pull data from Salesforce into Drupal. Everything’s working perfectly, right? Well, if you’re like me, then probably not. I noticed right away that I was running into and issue where Drupal was not updating records from Salesforce. In this tutorial, we’re going to troubleshoot the issue and implement a solution using by checking the salesforce_pull SystemQueue.

Display Field Values in an Accordion In Drupal

You probably already know that Drupal offers Views Accordion to display content in jQuery Accordions. This is fine if you’re looking to display specific content in this format, like a custom content type. However, what if you’re simply looking to display field values from a node on the node’s display in an accordion? This would require the use of contextual filters and block views if you were to use Views Accordion. However, there’s a much simpler way to achieve this functionality with Field Group and Field collection.

Make URL Patterns Match Menu Position in Drupal

Drupal’s Pathauto is a must have for any Drupal project. This tutorial will demonstrate a simple yet effective way to utilize Pathauto to create custom URL patterns that match the node’s menu position.

Integrate Salesforce With Local Drupal Installation

Salesforce is one of the most popular CRMs used today. In this tutorial we will integrate Salesforce with a local Drupal install in order to access the Salesforce API. This will allow us to map data between Salesforce and Drupal.

Create Live Search Results (Search as You Type) in Drupal

By default, Drupal offers the ability to search the site with its core Search module. However, this module can be limiting. In this tutorial we are going to configure live results. Below is the final result. When a user begins to type, live results will appear that are linked to a node.

Track Link Clicks In Drupal

You might be wondering why you would need to track the number of times a link is clicked in Drupal, when this can be done using Google Analytics and the Google Analytics Module. However, by default this just groups all outbound link clicks as “Outbound links”. Also (as far as I can tell), this doesn’t tell you on what specific page the user clicked that particular link on.

Create a Reddit Style Website In Drupal

Sites that allow users to post and vote on content such as Reddit and Digg are hugely successful. In this tutorial we are going to create a Reddit style website in Drupal. What do I mean by “Reddit style website”?

Bulk Update Redirects After Changing URL Pattern in Drupal

I recently worked on a project where the site’s URL structure was going to change. This is easy to do with Pathauto, but I wanted to ensure that the old URLs would redirect to the new URLs since this would affect hundred of nodes.

Drag and Drop Batch Upload Files In Drupal

I love Drupal, but its media handling is far from ideal. Out of the box, it pales in comparison to WordPress. Most notably, Drupal does not make it easy to batch upload files via a drag and drop interface.

Load Content In Drupal Via AJAX (Without Coding)

Loading content via Ajax can create a great user experience. Instead of loading a totally new page, the desired content is loaded on the existing page in a designated location.

Drupal Smartqueue Taxonomy Tutorial

Drupal allows you to organize content into taxonomies. This is best illustrated in tagging content, similar to Twitter. Drupal then dynamically creates pages that list content that have been categorized with specific taxonomy terms. By default, Drupal organizes content on these taxonomy pages based on post date. The most recently posted content will appear first.

Drupal FlexSlider with Carousel Controls

Drupal’s FlexSlider module allows for creation of responsive image sliders and carousels. This is perfect for creating banner slideshows, or just organizing images.

Linking to Content In Drupal

If you’re using the Pathauto Module, you know that you can create custom path patterns for nodes, taxonomies and users. This is great for SEO, as well as keeping content organized. However, one of the side effects of using Pathauto is that the paths to your content can change.

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